Abstract
This historical essay compares the views of Nicholas of Cusa (‘Cusanus’) and Georg Cantor on the topics of infinity, divinity, and mathematical knowledge. Echoing Nicholas and neo-Platonism, Cantor says in his Grundlagen (1883) that the transfinite sequence of all ordinals is a symbol of the absolutely infinite, which can only be acknowledged but never known. Moreover, Cantor envisions his transfinite set theory as providing the analytical methods and techniques necessary for a complete philosophy of nature. Cantor’s novel mathematics is presented as part of a long tradition, to which Cusanus, Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz and others belong, in which the infinite character of organic life forms is appreciated and is taken to be in some sense a mirror and symbol of the divine. The doctrine of symbolism present in both Cusanus and Cantor enables these thinkers to articulate a transcendental apophatic approach to divinity.
